Con­crete blocks on Yan­gon roads to be swapped with steel grilles

COM­BIN­ING road safety with style, the Yan­gon Re­gion gov­ern­ment is to re­place the con­crete lane mark­ers on the city’s busiest streets with steel grilles start­ing this month, said Po­lice Lieu­tenant Colonel Aung Ko Oo of the traf­fic po­lice.

The con­crete blocks first ap­peared in 2014 along Anawrahta Road, start­ing from 50th Street, in an ef­fort to keep cars out of the bus lane. Trans­port au­thor­i­ties found that the yel­low line orig­i­nally painted for that pur­pose was not suf­fi­cient. Later they placed plas­tic py­lons for the same pur­pose, but drivers just moved them.

Yan­gon City De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee placed con­crete blocks along Pyay and Kabar Aye Pagoda roads and else­where to try to re­duce con­ges­tion and speed the pas­sage of buses.

Crit­ics, how­ever, said the blocks caused ac­ci­dents.

“Some peo­ple said these blocks were very dan­ger­ous for buses and cars. It’s true,” said YCDC of­fi­cial U Kyaw Saw at the time. “First we painted yel­low lines, but drivers ig­nored them. Then we laid plas­tic blocks, but drivers got out and moved them. We never wanted to lay con­crete blocks, but we had to do it. I kept hop­ing peo­ple would get used to them.”

It was the po­lice who sug­gested that steel grill-work would be ti­dier.

“With the new gov­ern­ment’s 100day plan, and in co­op­er­a­tion with other de­part­ments, we looked at the traf­fic pat­terns,” said Lt Col Aung Ko Oo. “We found that the Maynigone fly­over to Parami junc­tion, the Sh­we­gonedaing fly­over to Sa­yar San junc­tion and the Hledan fly­over to Parami traf­fic lights were the best places to re­move the con­crete blocks and re­place them with steel grilles. The Yan­gon Re­gion gov­ern­ment au­tho­rised us to pro­ceed.”

The blocks will now be re­placed at the fly­over pedes­trian bridge at Ba­han, the Sa­yar San traf­fic lights near the Kokkine fly­over, and the Sh­we­gonedaing fly­over to Sethmu 1 traf­fic light.

“And we will per­ma­nently re­move the con­crete blocks from bus stop No 106 to Chan Myae Yeik Thar Monastery on Kabar Aye Pagoda Road, from Parami traf­fic lights to the School of the Min­istry of Labour, Em­ploy­ment and So­cial Se­cu­rity,” he said.

At the Pyay and Parami roads in­ter­sec­tion, po­lice will op­er­ate a man­ual traf­fic light sys­tem in­stead of an au­to­matic sys­tem.